Category Archives: Antique Home Restoration

With tiling now complete I’ve shifted back into carpentry mode, which is a welcome change since it’s what I enjoy the most. Because I don’t have a heavy duty table saw I rely on my track saw to break down large sheet goods. To help make this a quick and efficient process I built Read More

This was my second tiling project, and I found it a bit more finicky than my first one which was the tub surround. The tiles are unglazed porcelain: 3/4″ squares for the border and 1″ hex for the field. They come in 10 5/8″ x 9 1/2″ sheets which are held together by a plastic sheet which gets peeled off after the tiles have set. There was a fair amount of cutting and trimming to get everything line up, especially where the field tile meets the border. Because the tiles were too small to use with an uncoupling membrane like Schulter Ditra I opted to use a waterproofing membrane in combination with fibreglass mesh to minimize issues if the concrete subfloor were to develop cracks in the future. I rolled Mapei HPG directly onto the Read More

This was my first tiling project and I feel like I’m starting to get the hang of it. Click the arrows in the top left above to navigate through the photos. The shower mixing valve that we’ll be using is all external, old-school style, which is why the only visible plumbing is the hot and cold at waist height.

Up until the 1960s our house was heated using just the fireplaces in the front room, living room, master bedroom, and the original wood-burning stove in the kitchen. With no insulation in the house to speak of it would have been a huge job to keep the house warm. In the 1960s it was decided that a forced-air oil furnace would be installed in the crawlspace in a horizontal position, and the only way they were able to get it down there was by cutting a 30″ x 30″ hole right in the middle of the floor of the front room and dropping it down Read More

About Project Pope

Project Pope documents Matt & Jess's restoration of a 1904 Tudor Revival home in the Pacific Northwest. Also included are some of Matt's woodworking projects, a bit of photography, and whatever else we think might be interesting. Enjoy!